


Cirque du Līmūn

by Deejaymil



Series: Original Stories by a Bored Australian [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Circus, Flash Fic, Gen, Lemon, Mystery, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 08:41:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7526023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/pseuds/Deejaymil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, they solved the mystery but still lost the day.</p><p>This was one of those times.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cirque du Līmūn

**Author's Note:**

> Original flash fiction written for the prompt 'Mystery, Lemon, Circus'

 

“I hate circuses,” Officer Doyle grumbled, leaning her head against the dusty windshield and glaring at the garish tents pitched in the field in front of them. “Always did, even as a kid.”

“What, you never get your pocket money and go down to the fair for a laugh?” her partner asked, adjusted his belt around his wide gut and unbuckling his seatbelt. “What kind of a childhood is that?”

“I spent my weekends working in Mum’s shop,” Doyle told him as she climbed out of the car and scanned the nervous onlookers. There was fear and anger on almost every face. “Child labour it is, I feel for the kids stuck here. Like they’ve got a choice in what they’re born into.”

Detective Sharp grunted as he emerged from the car, scowling over a shabby moustache. Large and ruddy, he was the stark opposite of the fresh-faced Doyle. “Every young lad’s dream, running off to join the circus.”

Doyle considered the picture they’d received that morning, the child acrobat reported missing. Perhaps this was one child who would have been better off without that particular dream.

“Which one’s the family then?” she asked, taking her customary place behind Sharp’s shambling form. She was often overlooked there, better able to work unnoticed.

Sharp’s Brain, they called her. Those that didn’t laugh behind their hands at the small, mousey haired woman who fancied herself a copper, anyway.

One of the trailers burst open, a woman tumbling out in front of them. “My daughter!” she cried, baring greying teeth. “Hours now she’s gone, and you people only now arriving?” She rung something in her hands, brightly coloured with a jaunty bobble. A child’s woollen hat.

“Perhaps if you’d have called us in when it happened,” Sharp muttered, narrowing his eyes suspiciously at the woman. He’d called it the moment they’d received the report. It’s always the mother or the wife, was his motto.

He was a bit sexist, her partner was. But he was a damn good copper behind all that.

Doyle followed silently into the dim trailer. She squinted into the gloom, studying the meagre belongings scattered about while Sharp interviewed the mother.

_Two beds – mother and child. Blankets made to last. No time for toys. One battered box of cereal, open, bran. Two jars of savoury preserves, one open and one ready to be used. Thrifty people, organized. Poor._

She ran her hand along the shelf, noting the dust that coated her palm. Her hand nudged the one frivolity on the carefully stocked larder, a jar of strawberry jam, scraped almost dry.

“What you doing, copper?” the mother asked sharply. Doyle attempted a charming smile, knowing the expression sat strangely on her plain face. Hooked nose and heavy eyebrows inherited from a long-dead grandfather had done her no favours in the charisma department.

“When did you last see Alisa?” Sharp distracted the mother smoothly, pen poised over his notepad. They’d worked out a long time ago that it was better to not let Doyle talk to the public if they wanted things to run efficiently.

“She was playing outside with her doll. She’s only eight.”

Doyle spotted a battered pack of cigarettes on the shabby bedside cupboard, next to a glass of water and half a lemon, grubby with fingerprints. A doll was buried under the blankets, bright woollen hair only slightly visible. _Girl sleeps with her mother at night. She wouldn’t run away._

“Do you have anything to drink?” Doyle said suddenly. “It’s a long drive all the way out here, I’m terribly thirsty.”

“You ain’t done any detecting yet,” the mother complained, hat hanging forgotten from one hand. “What you want?”

“Do you have lemonade? Something sweet?” Doyle smiled again, dropping it quickly when Sharp rolled his eyes at her.

“No,” the woman replied. “I don’t like sweet things much. Got tea or water, if they’re good enough for you.”

“Not really, actually,” Doyle mused softly. Sharp watched her carefully, waiting to see where she was leading. “That hat, was it your daughters?”

The woman looked down at the hat in her hand and swallowed, nodding. “Can we borrow it?” Sharp asked in his deep voice. “Dogs might get a read on it. We’ll have it back to you.” The woman handed it over reluctantly as Doyle headed for the door.

“Going to do some detecting now,” she said to the woman, watching her reaction carefully. “Thanks for your time.” The door clattered on the way out, the breeze delightful after the cloying atmosphere in the trailer.

“What was that then? Something about the hat?” Sharp said curiously, grabbing her arm as soon as they were out of earshot.

“What’s it smell like?”

Her partner blinked slowly, taken aback. After three years of working together, he’d learnt to trust her, and he lifted the hat to his nose and sniffed carefully. “Lemons.”

Damn. He was going to hold this over her. “It’s the mother then. She’s come into cash very recently, a lot of it.”

“You got that from a lemony hat? Kid could have been picking fruit in it.”

“Back at Mum’s shop, when we did the tills we’d use a lemon to wet our fingers. Cleaner than licking. She’s been counting money. And the only sweet thing in there, the jam, she’s run out of it, because her daughter was the only one to eat it and she’s not around anymore.” She paused, heart sinking. “Lots of people would pay money for a young girl with nowhere to go.”

She could be anywhere at this point, they’d likely never find her.

A bang behind them and they turned to see the mother bolting out the door and vanishing into the labyrinth of trailers. “Bloody hell,” Sharp groused, launching himself after her.

Doyle put one hand on her baton as she ran. They might have solved this one, but there was no fixing this.

Sometimes they lost.


End file.
